Only about 1/4 of the points that were earned yesterday (expensive men at the top, apart from Doull who was unfancied, and a lower ranked race)

Riders in the game:TERPSTRA Niki 3rd, 72pts for the So Last Year teamLAMPAERT Yves 5th, 54pts for Laarsland, Leadbelly and Otoxiep87SENECHAL Florian 6th, 48 for Leadbelly and SalvaraniKEUKELEIRE Jens 7th, 42 for SearchDE BUYST Jasper 9th, 30 for Postmanhat

Also 5 more of the top 20, and 4 of the five point scorers (only the top 30 get anything in HC races, whereas all finishers get at least 5 in the WT races)

Yesterday's points are more than 80% of the total, so no surprise that the top 2 remain as they were. Leadbelly jumps 9 places (matched by NAS further down the table) into third, and Laarsland and Search also move (just) into the early top ten.

New this year, and if what I have done on the spreadsheet works, I'll incorporate it into the GT games as well.

Regardless of the status of the race, or how narrow or convincing the margin, managers are to be rewarded for their position in each race. I will use the points scale that CQ give to the top ten finishers in a Tour de France stage (80, 50, 35, 25, 15, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1), and where two or more teams share a score, I will add the points and divide them, so the two teams that shared 6th today, I add 10 points for 6th to 5 for 7th, divide that total by 2, and award each manager 7.5 points in the Green Jersey contest.

The spreadsheet is here: as ever, it will not move but I might not post the link in every update. You will notice one other new feature in the spreadsheet although I haven't extracted anything from it in these opening posts: a page showing how many riders each team has in common with each other team (the most similar teams share 8 men).

Maybe someone will check if they can find a better "So Last Year" combination than I could find: the data is on the 'Price' page.

ThePirate81 over at CN points out that Jasper Philipsen is now acknowledged as having finished 24th in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, having initially been omitted from the results.So 5 points to teams with Philipsen (BlackBandit222, Blues in the Bottle, Bminchow, Chiron, Joelsim, Josedin, North American Scum, Otoxiep87, ThePirate81) : nobody picked the now 31st placed and therefore pointless Kasper Asgreen.

In an effort to not be too late with updates, I post as soon as I can after CQ put up the full finishers list(I can't do much before that, which is usually quite a delay already), and I can't promise to always notice all subsequent alterations to the result sheet, so please do point it out if it happens on other races. I will assume that CQ is (eventually) correct if results services vary, unless there is overwhelming evidence that they have made a mistake (although in my experience they are flexible and humble enough to acknowledge and change). Maybe I should allow 24 hours or so after the final race before I declare a definite result.

180 points won today, MSR as a stated goal, and the Ardennes to follow, maybe Alaphilippe will prove to be the key to success that nobody tried in this game.

Those in today's top ten that we did pick:VAN AERT Wout 3rd, 92pts for 15 teamsSTYBAR Zdenek 4th, 78 for JustSomeGuy, LightBing and TobydawqBENOOT Tiesj 5th, 70 for LightBing and ScroolVAN AVERMAET Greg 6th, 62 for Black Bandit 222LUTSENKO Alexey 7th, 54 for Armchair Cyclist, Del 1962 and SalvaraniWELLENS Tim 10th, 36 for JSGalso 4 more of the top 20, and 10 other 5 point finishers, were among our picks

I'm not expecting many points from the Industria e Artigeano (did that name from memory, almost certainly got it wrong) tomorrow, but there will be an update, and it is just as relevant to the Green Jersey competition as Paris-Roubaix.

I know I said that this would contribute just as much to the green jersey competition as any monument: it would if I averaged out the points and gave everyone 6.47, but if you don't mind, I don't think I'll bother.

After the completely pointless GP Larciano last weekend, the Ronde van Drenthe didn't produce much more this week. I guess that the WT teams have their eyes on Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, so their riders, and our picks, are largely absent.

I guess with more races becoming WT, those that are still 1.HC get less attention. We'll have some chat at the end of the game about how to select races for next year, but for now, I said it was in, so it is.

PLANCKAERT Edward 7th, 42 pts for Just Some GuyDEMPSTER Zakkari 21st, 5 for Blues in the BottleSPENGLER Lukas 24th, 5 for So Last Year, and therefore not counted for Green PointsALLEGAERT Piet 27th, 5 for Otoxiep87

Blues itB moves up 2 places to 11th, Otoxiep remains in 10th, and JSG retakes the lead, 24 ahead of Tobydawq rather than 18 down.

80 Green points to JSG, and 42.5 to the other two scorers. That means the points for positions 4-10 should be shared among the other 32 teams. But rather than give them all 1.91 points, and on the same principle as I didn't give everyone 6.47 points last week, I'll take that amount off the three scores that were achieved. So that'll be 78.09 and 40.59.1 JustSomeGuy 173.092 Tobydawq 1003 Otoxiep87 91.594 Leadbelly 804 Scrool07 806 LightBing 707 Blues_in_the_Bottle 44.598 Salvarani 358 Laarsland 3510 Del1962 30

Let's see whether Nokere Koerse on Wednesday is a bit more impactful on the scores.

Man, I thought that was lining up to be a Matthieu Van Der Poel victory, now he’s probably out for the rest of the Classics! The English commentator I had was unable to identity MVP for several minutes. Every MTB and CX fan was probably slack jawed during this time as the most famous rider in the race in a National Championship kit no less lay unidentified in the fence. Amazing how people can’t identify cross discipline cyclists. (That said I’m unfamiliar with the winner)

Speaking of Cross Discipline riders I’m excited to see all the young Americans headed to Europe for the Classics over the next month including the US National team, Lux Jr squad, Arapahoe-Hincapie and Hagens Berman Axeon (in this race, recent alumnus finished 3rd). But, recent winner of the Redlands final stage Quinn Simmons was a multi time mountain bike championship & International competitor at some sort of Telemark ski competition. He transitioned to Road last year after contacting Roy Knickman and finished 3rd at Ghent Wevelgem and 7th at Roubaix as a first year Junior 17-18! Wow the next Farrar or Hincapie ??!

Man, I thought that was lining up to be a Matthieu Van Der Poel victory, now he’s probably out for the rest of the Classics! The English commentator I had was unable to identity MVP for several minutes. Every MTB and CX fan was probably slack jawed during this time as the most famous rider in the race in a National Championship kit no less lay unidentified in the fence. Amazing how people can’t identify cross discipline cyclists. (That said I’m unfamiliar with the winner)

MTB and CX notwithstanding, MvdP is the Dutch champion. A commentator should know who the various national champions are (definitely of the big nations, of which the Netherlands is one).

This race might have had a much bigger effect on the game (and the classics season) than the points it has yielded, although more recent announcements suggest that Van Der Poel's injuries are not as bad as feared (I thought Gerts' and Moschetti's falls looked even nastier) and his schedule might be unaffected.

The back and forth at the top of the table between Tobydawq and JSG continues: Toby's turn at the top, but only by 2 points. Bminchow (5 places) and Ototxiep (4) have the most significant top ten rises, Blues in the Bottle and Laarsland enter the top ten, and further down, the biggest leaps are made by Joelsim (10 places), Pirate81 (11) and NAS(12).

For the first time, the lead is extended rather than swapped back, Tobydawq taking a lead into the first Monument. Laarsland (op from 10th) and Bminchow finally break up the dominance of the Stybar teams. Chiron moves up 6 places to get into the top ten, and the rise of the day plaudits (16 places) are shared by Safebet and Los Brolin.

The biggest favourites for Milan-San Remo aren't picked for the game (with the exception of Gaviria), but the unpredictability of that race, and the higher number of points available, mean that we should expect considerable shake up in the table.

Only the first 12 from MSR up so far, but SemirS has Naesen as a unique pick, and has Van Aert. Three riders, including leader Tobydawq, combine Van Aert with the other popular pick in the top ten, Trentin.

The close battle has turned into a dominant lead, with the closest contender this morning being second last on the day. It is now combining Van Aert and Trentin, (rather than having Stybar) that defines the podium, but having Stybar as well provides a large margin of lead. Josedin and Del1962 move into the top ten, but their rises are as nothing to that of Semir, who has jumped 22 places to 5th.

Of the top 13, all but Bminchow and JSG have Van Der Poel. Madrazo, Joelsim and Triley36 are new in the top ten, all with 9 place rises, although three teams went one better, Premier Andrew managed a 12 spot jump, but Pirate81 tops the pile by jumping 13 spots. SemirS gets onto the virtual podium, despite a team featuring one retired rider and I reckon 4 others who will not even start one of these races.

About halfway through: the remaining races are, on average, of a higher status than those already raced, and on those grounds, might be expected to yield more points, but we always see a big change in the selection of riders, and teams, that score after Paris-Roubaix.